Lou Dobbs Debates Border Before Latino Crowd

CNN’s famously blunt anchor Lou Dobbs took on ideological foes Friday, telling an audience of Hispanic journalists that the United States was the “candy-rock mountain of the world” being chipped away by immigration policies meant to protect corporate interests.

Dobbs debated with former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda; New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; and the Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. It was an immigration debate punctuated by jokes and sharp jabs.

The forum headlined Friday’s roster at the annual convention of the National Assn. of Hispanic Journalists in Fort Lauderdale. Acknowledging that many in the audience had a family stake in the immigration debate, moderator Ray Suarez, of the Public Broadcasting Service, opened by asking spectators to “keep emotions well-mannered.”

At one point, Dobbs accused the Mexican government of exporting its poor to the United States, with “derelict” efforts to improve living conditions for its own.

Castaneda said the flow was in fact robbing Mexico of its most daring and entrepreneurial citizens, not unwanted citizens. He said, historically, Mexicans had emigrated north not to mock border controls, but because the U.S. government wanted them to come.

“Do you think Mexicans like to pass across the border through the Sonora desert?” Castaneda asked, to applause. “Do you think they like to die in the desert?”

Dobbs has turned his evening business show on CNN into a platform against reforms debated in Congress that would legalize millions of immigrants. On one recent CNN appearance, he congratulated a commentator for airing a viewer’s e-mail that called for laying landmines along the border. Dobbs supports massive deportations and cracking down on employers who hire workers without the proper authorization.

“How can we reform immigration if we cannot control immigration?” he said in his opening remarks. “And how can we control immigration if we can’t control our borders and ports?”

Richardson, a Democrat, held up his own state’s policies as a counterbalance to an enforcement-only approach espoused by House conservatives.

New Mexico allows illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, he said, pushing down the number of hit-and-run accidents and auto insurance premiums. His state also gives in-state tuition to the children of immigrants here illegally.

“This is working,” he said. “Let’s bring these individuals out of the shadows.”

Beckmann, whose Washington-based organization lobbies for the world’s hungry, took Dobbs to task over comments that illegal immigrants were driving down wages, particularly in the meatpacking industry.

“It’s not just the Mexican government that has failed its poor people,” he said.

Low-wage earners were feeling squeezed because of expensive healthcare and poor education, he said, not just because immigrants are filling low-paying jobs.